


My Way Or The Highway

by skittenninja



Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, POV Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Threats of Violence, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26810179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittenninja/pseuds/skittenninja
Summary: Whumptober 2020 Day Three: What started out as a poorly conceived but leisurely ride through the woods of Camelot has escalated to Merlin and Arthur both being captured, and Arthur soon finds out that ransom money isn’t the only thing on the leader’s mind.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949905
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	My Way Or The Highway

Arthur had honestly had better days.

Getting kidnapped and held for ransom was never really on a person’s ideal picture of a relaxing day off, but that was exactly the predicament that Arthur wound up in.

In hindsight, he probably should have gone out for a ride with a couple more people, especially with all the reports he and his father had received about suspicious activity and travellers moving back and forth between Camelot and Cenred’s kingdom. Even Merlin had confessed that he didn’t think Arthur going for a ride was a good idea and that if he insisted on being stupid then Merlin would insist on coming with him.

Arthur had pretended to be annoyed by it at the time, even though he secretly was happy Merlin had been around to put him in better spirits (though he wouldn’t say it to Merlin’s face).

Now all of that had just dissolved into worry. After the ambush, both of them had been blindfolded and led away, crossbows trained on their every movement. There had been hushed whispers that Arthur hadn’t been able to hear, and Merlin went from standing right next to him to being dragged away somewhere else for the trip back to… wherever they were.

So, even as Arthur was being led down a darkened hallway, hands tied behind his back and the vice-like grips of two of his captors on his arms, he couldn’t help but wonder where Merlin was.

The stone hallway ended abruptly, directly in front of them, and as Arthur saw the metal and wood door steadily growing closer he tried to survey the area for any windows or clues that would give away their general location. It was hard to be discreet about this, what with a man on either side of him, both of whom were literally in charge of watching his every move, and his efforts proved fruitless anyways. The only light the hallway had came from the torches placed at intervals along the walls, and there were no decorations or other exits of any kind.

They reached the large door far sooner than Arthur would have liked. The man holding his right side raised a fist and knocked three times in an uncomfortably slow manner, each booming rap echoing down the desolate stone hallway and reinforcing the unnerving uncertainty of what awaited Arthur on the other side.

There was a pause, then a click. Then a groan as the doors swung open.

Without hesitation, Arthur was ushered inside the new room.

Unfortunately, there were no windows in this one either, just several torches that dimly illuminated several shadowy figures in rather dramatic lighting. One sat upon a chair that seemed to be a makeshift throne, though the man upon it was no king nor prince that Arthur had ever met.

Merlin was still nowhere in sight.

Arthur’s footsteps loudly clacked against the floor, and the fact that this was the only sound in the room as he was forced to approach the fake throne set him even more on edge. He knew how to hide it, of course, but he still didn’t like where this was headed.

“Welcome, Arthur Pendragon,” said the man on the fake throne, standing up with far more energy than seemed necessary. “To my humble kingdom.”

The two men escorting Arthur halted suddenly about two feet away from the now-standing man, although they didn’t release him. Arthur was close enough now that he could get a proper look at the person he assumed to be the ringleader in all of this, who was a rather peculiar man.

He was wearing a crown that was obviously stolen. From where, Arthur didn’t know, as the insignia on it had been tampered with until it had faded into being unrecognizable. But there was no other way a man like this could have come to have it in his possession.

He wore rather expensive clothing, bright hues cloaked in a well-made fur cape, but none of it seemed to fit right. It hadn’t been tailored for him. The outfit vividly reminded Arthur of trying on one of his father’s capes as a child, a young boy playing pretend in a role that he wasn’t big enough for. His hands and wrists were adorned with more jewelry that clearly didn’t belong to him, different stones and metals haphazardly mismatched, nearly overlapping. Even his smile seemed false, a gratuitous sense of bravado serving as shiny armour for something else underneath.

“I beg your pardon?” Arthur asked him. The man knew who he was, which had been plainly obvious from the moment they’d been captured, but Arthur couldn’t say the same about him.

The man kept smiling arrogantly, stance casual as he began to pace around Arthur in a meandering circle.

“Yes, you may beg,” he chuckled, though Arthur didn’t respond. “I simply welcomed you to my kingdom.”

Arthur knew for a fact this man wasn’t a real king, but he couldn’t exactly claim they were in Camelot either, since he had no idea where they were.

“I assure you I heard you the first time. My point was to ask what on earth you might be the king of?” Arthur said pointedly.

“I am Lucien, king of thieves,” he stated, braggadocio dripping from his voice, “And this would be my kingdom of thieves.

Arthur had to pause for a second to process that.

“Right. And might I also ask what exactly it is you want with my manservant and me?”

The answer was obviously money via ransom, but Arthur wanted to play dumb if it gave him a chance to gain any information on where Merlin was. He had no intention of escaping without him.

Lucien had completed a full circle around him by this point, as if to size him up, and was now back in front of him.

“I would have thought you were wiser, Arthur. What better treasure to steal from the great kingdom of Camelot than its beloved crown prince?”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Arthur interjected. “What does a manservant have to do with this? Surely a king of thieves can think of better schemes than potentially rendering the court short of staff?”

Lucien frowned at that, and Arthur felt the grip of the man to his left tighten harshly, nails beginning to dig into his bicep.

“I have reason to believe the boy will be useful to me in other ways, none of which concern you at this time,” Lucien answered vaguely. “I think it’s time you showed me some respect for leaving you unharmed, a decision I am beginning to regret, so I suggest you kneel before the king.”

Arthur had already made up his mind not to comply but quickly discovered that the decision was not his to make. The two men who guarded him shifted their grip and pushed directly down on his shoulders with a force he wasn’t prepared for, and his legs had to collapse under the added weight. His knees hit the stone floor sharply, pain shooting upwards from them after the uncomfortable landing.

There was only a brief attempt to get back up, one which was instantly thwarted. His guards still had a hand each on his shoulders, and even just one from either of them was enough to keep him stuck on the ground. If there had only been one guard, Arthur might have stood a chance, but he was no match for two of them in his current situation.

Arthur looked up at Lucien, hating how small it made him feel, and tried his best to continue to look composed. It seemed to work, as Lucien grew visibly more frustrated upon reading Arthur’s expression.

“I’ve never liked brats like you, Arthur,” Lucien said. He shifted his fur cape and revealed the sheath of a dagger, which he then drew in a deliberately slow manner. Its hilt was ornate and covered in various gems, the blade seeming to glow red from the reflection of the torch light.

“Your father will easily pay for any misstep you ever take, every unthinkable situation you could find yourself in. Sons of kings get the spoils from kingdoms won, and the rest of us are left with the ruins.”

Arthur could tell this was personal, but he didn’t want to entertain the discussion. He tried to use this time to scan the room for any potential way out without Lucien noticing.

Lucien, unfortunately, noticed.

There was a flash of metal, a linear and stinging pain across his right cheek, then the feeling of something warm trickling down Arthur’s face. His first instinct was to bring a hand up to it, but he was quickly reminded of the fact that they were restrained behind his back. Something dark in colour dripped off Lucien’s dagger, painting the floor with small dots.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you!” Lucien screamed, ire burning in his eyes and hate tearing through his throat. His composure had vanished in less than a second, and the unhinged anger that Arthur saw was far more terrifying than his false pretense of confidence.

Arthur kept his gaze fixated on the ground.

Another slash sliced open his left cheek as a response, both sides of Arthur’s face now weeping blood.

“I should just cut them right out of your head,” Lucien murmured, and it took Arthur a moment to realize, with horror, what he was talking about. “I wonder what a girl would pay to constantly have your eyes on her.”

Blood from the dagger dripped and dripped to the floor. Arthur’s heart began to race, as if it were trying to escape his body to avoid becoming the next victim of Lucien’s unleashed anger.

Arthur made another pointless attempt to try to escape his restraints, both the ropes and the guards, but he once again was unsuccessful. The binding on his hands didn’t give in the slightest and his struggling caused the two men holding him to tighten their grip. Nails started to poke at his skin before swiftly piercing through it and Arthur was unable to supress a small cry of pain.

Lucien seemed satisfied with this, regaining his cocky smile as he hid his anger behind it again. He crouched down to Arthur’s level with the dagger still in his hand, making Arthur feel even more powerless.

“If you’re this much of an ass,” Lucien whispered, his awful breath immediately assaulting Arthur’s nose, “I wonder how much fun that servant of yours will be later.”

Arthur didn’t think about what he did next, and even knowing the consequences, he would have done it again. Rage bubbled up inside of him at the thought of this man laying a finger on Merlin, and so Arthur promptly spit in his face.

Lucien cried out and fell backwards onto the floor, and Arthur looked down at him with a satisfied smile.

“If you so much as think about touching him, I’ll have you hanged-“

Arthur never got to finish his threat. An interruption appeared in the form of Lucien recovering a lot quicker than he was expecting. A fist swung just near his face and connected under his chin, pain shooting across his skull like lightning and vision going white as his head was forced backwards in a sickening manner.

Arthur was dimly aware of something grabbing his jaw and holding his head in place, but he didn’t have the strength or coherency to shake it off. When he could finally see clearly again, he was met with Lucien’s fiery gaze and a dagger less than an inch away from his eye. He wanted to move, to get as far away from the sharp object as possible, but he knew attempting to do so would just make Lucien plunge it into its target sooner.

The grip on Arthur’s jaw tightened, nails finding a hold in his skin.

“Take a good look,” Lucien said, voice seething. “I want my face to be the last you ever see.”

Arthur fully prepared himself for horrible agony in his eye and the disgusting sensation of an integral part of him being mutilated, but neither of these arrived.

Even with Lucien being so close in front of him, Arthur still wasn’t sure what happened next.

There was a large boom, a small but strange explosion of some kind, one that pushed Arthur and his captors in many different directions. His whole body painfully connected with the stone floor, a sensation he was becoming accustomed to, and he could hear the screams of the many guards that had been in the room blending together in a petrifying symphony. The rumbling of the building served as the percussion, the sound of stone hitting stone and walls cracking periodically penetrating the terrified wailing.

He thought he could hear Lucien screaming too.

He thought he detected the unfortunately familiar smell of burning flesh.

Just as Arthur was about to gather the strength to get up, a greatly missed face popped into his line of sight, the person crouching above him.

“Merlin?”

“Fancy meeting you here,” Merlin joked with his signature smile, and Arthur welcomed the feeling of relief that flooded his chest at the sight.

Merlin carefully helped Arthur to his feet, after which he immediately started leading him out of the room. Strangely enough, the doors seemed to have been blown off their hinges, lying in pieces by the entrance.

Arthur decided not to question it and focused on following Merlin down the hall, the two of them racing away from the room with the awful smell and awful screams.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Arthur said as Merlin took him around an abrupt turn. They entered another hallway, this one darker and still lacking windows.

“Sure enough,” Merlin shouted back over his shoulder, and it was enough for Arthur.

After a few more seemingly nonsensical changes in direction, the two of them finally stumbled out of a door and onto a stone walkway, which Merlin continued to run down. Arthur continued to follow him but hazarded a glance back at the place he’d just escaped from.

It looked like an older nobleman’s home, and a rather ornate one. Arthur couldn’t estimate how old it really was, however, due to the fact that it was crumbling and falling in on itself before his still-intact eyes.

The two of them ran for another couple of minutes until they reached the cover of trees, where they watched the rest of the building collapse in the distance as they caught their breath and tried to recover from their escape. Arthur had no idea what force had caused the building to collapse, what kind of explosion had blown him away from Lucien, why exactly he could have sworn he smelled a man being burned alive.

Looking at his companion, who seemed winded but otherwise unharmed, Arthur also ruminated on how he had no idea how Merlin escaped either. He’d surprised Arthur too many times to count, and his miraculous flight from armed men who could break him in half inside a labyrinthine stone building, one he’d managed without receiving a single scratch, was a rather sufficient entry on that ever-growing list.

Another lopsided smile from Merlin in the face of danger put Arthur’s mind at ease. He could ask Merlin about what happened later, but at the moment, he only cared that he was alive and safe.

“Would now be a bad time to say I told you so?” Merlin asked jokingly.

And Arthur could only laugh.


End file.
